Virgin and Tesco may offer health services as rivals to GPs

GP surgeries across England will face competition from health centres run by private companies, including Sir Richard Branson's Virgin group, under plans to be presented to the cabinet today. The health minister, Sir Ara Darzi, a leading cancer surgeon who was asked by Gordon Brown to provide a new vision for the NHS, will propose radical changes to give patients more choice of family doctor services.

He has convened a conference of NHS trusts, charities and private companies to work out how patients could access GP services near their place of work or gym during the day, or near their home during evenings and weekends. The Department of Health said it had already agreed to a request from Virgin to describe its proposed new outlets as "health centres", offering GP consultations from high street premises. Boots and Lloydspharmacy have also told officials they are interested in challenging the traditional service run by local GP partnerships.

The companies could be contracted to provide free services to patients, using salaried doctors and nurses, or paid for making consultation areas available in their stores, with medical staff provided by the local primary care trust.

The health secretary, Alan Johnson, told journalists yesterday that he wanted the NHS to respond to changes in society. That included "doing far more to ensure people have a choice in primary care as well as in acute hospital services", he said.

Sir Ara said hospital A&E departments were coming under huge pressure from patients needing services that could have been provided by a GP. "The system will not be sustainable in the next decade if we don't have alternative models of out-of-hours," he said.

A health department spokesman said Sir Ara had called a meeting of potential private and voluntary sector providers of primary care services. They would include private healthcare providers such as Bupa, Netcare and Care UK, but supermarket giants such as Tesco would also be welcome to attend. Sir Ara will present his ideas to the cabinet today.

The Confederation of British Industry said last night that rigid and outdated GP services were costing the economy about £1bn a year in lost output. Time spent at the doctor's wasted the equivalent of 3.5m working days a year - more than four times the amount lost due to industrial action. John Cridland, the deputy director general, said: "We need a GP service that fits around people's lives, offering convenience and flexibility."

Laurence Buckman, chairman of the BMA's general practice committee, said: "If employees lose time from work to see their doctor it is either because they are ill and need care, or because their employer has insisted they get a sick note, even for a temporary illness which has passed.

"This abuse of the sick note system is a waste of the time of both working people and clinicians."